Women, feminism, and geek culture

Linkspam is the mind-killer (1 July 2014)

Facebook’s emotion study and research ethics:

Facebook Manipulated 689,003 Users’ Emotions For Science | Kashmir Hill at Forbes (June 28): “Facebook’s data scientists manipulated the News Feeds of 689,003 users, removing either all of the positive posts or all of the negative posts to see how it affected their moods. If there was a week in January 2012 where you were only seeing photos of dead dogs or incredibly cute babies, you may have been part of the study. Now that the experiment is public, people’s mood about the study itself would best be described as ‘disturbed.'”

Facebook and Engineering the Public | Zeynep Tufecki at Medium (June 29): “I’m struck by how this kind of power can be seen as no big deal. Large corporations exist to sell us things, and to impose their interests, and I don’t understand why we as the research/academic community should just think that’s totally fine, or resign to it as ‘the world we live in’. That is the key strength of independent academia: we can speak up in spite of corporate or government interests.”

Did Facebook and PNAS violate human research protections in an unethical experiment? | David Gorski at Science-Based Medicine (June 30): “As tempting of a resource as Facebook’s huge amounts of data might be to social scientists interested in studying online social networks, social scientists need to remember that Facebook’s primary goal is to sell advertising, and therefore any collaboration they strike up with Facebook information scientists will be designed to help Facebook accomplish that goal. That might make it legal for Facebook to dodge human subjects protection guidelines, but it certainly doesn’t make it ethical.”

Spammy spam:

Double Union members have released the Open Diversity Data scoreboard: “Companies already collect data about their employee demographics. Let’s ask them to publish it. Open diversity data will make it easier for everyone to better understand the diversity landscape and work toward solutions.”

Making Quora More Civil: | Marc Bodnick at the Quora Moderation Blog (May 14): “Quora aims to be the safest and most rewarding place on the internet for people to share knowledge… Earlier this year, we received feedback from people, including many women, about what we should be doing better to address various issues related to respectfulness and civility — including the importance of dealing with the problem of microaggression. We take feedback like this seriously, and I want to summarize recent changes that we’ve made to address this feedback.”

Living as a woman in a science fiction future | Kari Sperring (June 16): “Uhura was different. So was Rydra. So, when I met them, were Anne McCaffrey’s female heroes. Lessa had her own dragon and went her own way — and was proved right, over and over… They were all at the very centre of their own lives and no-one expected them to step aside. I wanted that future so much and science fiction told me I would have it.” There’s a followup post at Collateral damage (June 17).

Policy: NIH to balance sex in cell and animal studies | Janine A. Clayton and Francis S. Collins at Nature News (May 14): “Today, just over half of [US National Institutes of Health]-funded clinical-research participants are women… There has not been a corresponding revolution in experimental design and analyses in cell and animal research — despite multiple calls to action1… The over-reliance on male animals and cells in preclinical research obscures key sex differences that could guide clinical studies. And it might be harmful: women experience higher rates of adverse drug reactions than men do.”

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I have a few recommendations for an upcoming linkspam. On June 13 The Mary Sue has merged with a site called Geekosystem, which is the typical dudebro-focused ‘general’ geek site. Not only is TMS’s new editor, Glen Tickle, a rabid misogynist, but they have also removed all references to TMS being for geek women. They say it’s to be more ‘inclusive’ but Tickle’s response to TMS’s core audience telling them that this change makes them feel excluded has been to respond to the complaints with misogynist tweets. The majority of their content also now seems to be exactly what you would expect a bunch of men who think it’s a feminist act to uncritically pat other ‘allies’ on the back would write. (Note: I give full permission to anyone who wishes to use the above summary in part or full, as long as a link back to this comment is given.)